October 22, 2025 • 31 mins
Sean Hannity welcomes Bill O’Reilly for their weekly “Simple Man” conversation about the political chaos in New York, race-baiting in the media, and the radical drift of the modern Democratic Party. The two discuss the pressures facing Curtis Sliwa and Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral race and the national implications of far-left policies. Later, Hannity takes a call from a self-described Democrat whose views on border security, policing, and taxation reveal the rise of a new kind of common-sense voter in America.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Well, we have come out to your city, Donna pay
I get.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thomas saying you a conscious zone, will be desire how.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
A telan.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
And if you want a little mag in a yin,
I come along Stephen Miller.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
He's he's a Nazi, Yes he is, and he's Jewish.
He should be ashamed of himself.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
The truth is that Donald Trump is the most president
in the history of the United States of America.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
What I say now, you say, kings new New.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
This is what democracy looks like.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
That's what democracy looks like.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
This, there's what democracy looks like.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
This is what democracy looks what fradom is back in style.
Welcome to the evolution, coming to your.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
SENTI going the way I gets Alz and sane you
a conscious song.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Sean Hennity show more me I'm the scenes. Information on
freaking news and.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
More bold inspired solutions for America. Coming up next our
final News round Up and Information Overload hour.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
All Right, News Round Up and Information Overload Hour eight
hundred and nine four one, Sean, if you want to
be a part of the program. It's been beyond disconcerting
to me that there are so many that have jumped
on a bandwagon and have you know, at times made
Israel the the you know, the aggressor in this conflict.
(01:52):
And I ask people all the time, I say, Okay,
imagine your country has been inundated from all sides, with
rockets being fired into your town and your city and
your country. I mean, we're not talking about, you know,
a thousand, We're talking about tens and tens and tens
of thousands. I told you about the trip I took
(02:15):
one of my many trips to Israel, and I went
to Throat, a border town with Gaza, and by the
time I had been there, they had gotten hit with
ten thousand rockets one little town. In ten years. Kids
played in underground bunker playgrounds. And when I was there
one day, I came back the next day and they
had been a rocket attack the night before and a kabbutz,
(02:38):
you know, was you know, you see the shrapnel and
the metal, you know, designed for maximum destruction. And imagine
if this was an American city, and then imagine you
have a population of under ten million Israelis in what
is a geographic size about the state of New Jersey,
(02:58):
and you know, just imagine that the equivalent of you
extrapolate out their population compared to ours of forty thousand
dead Americans in a day, because that's that's the percentage
of their population that were murdered on October seventh, twenty
twenty three, and then those that were kidnapped, and then
(03:19):
the rapes that took place. All of this is on video.
The IDF showed it to me. And the beheadings that
took place, and the torture that took place, we now
understand inside what that would be like. We're very honored
to have on the program. Elie Sharabi is with us.
He spent four hundred and ninety one days in captivity.
(03:41):
He has a brand new book out, it's called Hostage.
It just debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.
And he's here to tell his story, and it's really
an honor to have him. I can't imagine the horror
of having a face four under ninety one days in captivity,
not knowing if if you're ever going to get home
and see your family again. Elie Sharabi, thank God you're home.
(04:05):
God bless you, and thank you for joining us on
this program.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Tell us what happened that day, October seventh. I know
that you had been leading a peaceful life. You had
a new wife from Great Britain, and take us to
that day.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
We woke up half past six in the morning, thousands
of alarmed missiles over central and southern of Israel, all
the kyboots in the area of Gaza, and we took
our daughters to the safe room and our dog.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
We've waited there for more than four hours.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
We've waited that the army will arrive because we got
a message that there's a possibilit that harmasteroists infiltrated the
Bary and and some half an hour before they arrived
to our house, me and my wife made a decision
(05:14):
that we are not going to fight back. We don't
have any weapons with us, and we presumed that I
will be kidnapped. And my wife and my daughters have
a British passport and we presume that this passport will
protect them. We thought that this terrorists have any boundaries
(05:35):
and that's it for hours in this safe room, and
they arrived to our house, opened the safe room and
start to shoot immediately in the safe room to scare us,
we jumped on our daughters to shield them and protect them,
and we shouted them to stop, and immediately we said
(06:00):
them they have a British passport. They understood that, and
three minutes later they kidnapped me as we presumed, and
that was the last time I've seen my daughters alive.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And go through the rest of the story. What happened
to your family?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Apparently five minutes after they give me they've been I've
been kidnapped.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
They murdered.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
My wife and my two daughters in our house and
our dog as well.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
And like they've done in you know, in many places,
and then in our key boots.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Our key boots suffered from one hundred and to people
that've been dead same day, been murdered, and another thirty
being kidnapped together.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You know, you were fluent in Arabic, which allowed you
to understand everything your captors are saying when you finally
realize that you were being held by Hamas. And I
assume you didn't know at the time what had happened
to your family, but you understood what your captors were saying,
which kind of revealed insight into their motivations, their belief system,
(07:17):
the hierarchy inside of Hamas. What did you learn, what
did you hear? Did they know that you understood them?
Speaker 5 (07:25):
First of all, they were very very surprised.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I know Arabic, and they start to say to me
that I'm from Mozad and.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
All this secret service.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And I said, then, I'm simple civilian and understood, of
course everything they've said. They tried to hide from me
a few information, but I succeed to understand almost everything.
And I had many, many conversations with them, and each conversation,
(07:59):
you know, they've finished with this mantra and these sentences
that they have heard in the mosque. And they said
to me that they don't care how many how much
time will take to kill all the Israelis and the Jews.
And they come in and they come back on twenty six,
(08:19):
twenty seven, and twenty eight, and after they finished with
the Israelis and the Jews, they will come to Britain
and France and Germany and to us, because for them
all the words should be Muslims and there's only religion,
only one religion in the world.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
It's this Lam.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Let me ask you this question, because you know you
had a life experience as a father and a manager,
and you claim that that gave you tools to navigate,
you know, what you were going through at the time.
When when did they really think in that, Wow, my
life has now changed dramatically and I have no power
over the future of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
The minute that they pushed me into the car near
to Newberry, I've understood that it's I'm in my step
having mode. Now I need to survive to come back
to my wife and my daughters. And so I understood, Okay,
I don't have any control of my life now or
(09:20):
my freedom, but I I can, you know, always to
choose how to react to this, to these situations.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
And I tried.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
To choose all the time, you know, choose life and
try to survive.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
A moment you thought was there a moment you thought
there's no way you're going home?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
No, it was one it No, it wasn't any one
moment of that. Always keep saying to the young other
hostages that have been with me that it's only a
matter of time that with someone, sometime in the future,
someone will come and let us know that we are
going home and we are.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
Going to be released.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And because you know, I know how the IDEF works
and all this, you know, Security Service of Israel walking
and I knew they're taking care of us to release
us from there.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Let me ask you what were there? What was the
relationship like with your fellow hostages? What was the relationship
like with your captors?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
What were the conditions like? Where were you being held?
The more you moved often.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So of course we had a relationship, a kind of
relationship with our captors. It was very delicate relationship which
should be very very careful not to get confused with them.
But we understood this relationship should help us to survive,
and we give us the will be able to ask
(11:02):
some things from time to time, and especially food, of course.
And the relationship within between us the hostages wasn't all
the time great because when you put four gon up
men in ten metal square, it's not easy.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
Each one of us have his own, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Desires and way to live and values, and.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
It wasn't very easy.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And all these situations you should be managed that you
can be able to survive together. And the condition in
the tunnels were horrible.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
We were chained.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Twenty four to seven for almost all all the days
in captivity.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
It was most of the time it's dark.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
They don't have enough batteries for life, fifty metals underground,
no water, no no running water for shower. So we
showered with with our bottles one one in six weeks.
And you know, worms all over the place, rats, cockroaches,
(12:24):
and they humiliate us day on daily basis.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
From time to time. It was violenced against us.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And but the worst thing was the starvation that was
on purpose, of course, because they ate four or five
times a day a day, and we ate one, you know,
one bottle of past our day, one and a half
bitter bread a day.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
That's what we ate.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And we've seen the dozens of boxes that coming into
the to the tunnels every week, every two weeks, this
humanitarian aid that they stole from their population.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Now you were given there were some days you were
only given a peter a day and that was it.
That's all you'd have all day. And you know, you
saw whether you live. Were you in the tunnels pretty
much the whole time? Were you in different tunnels that
they move you at times?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
So I moved three tunners for four hundred and forty days.
From the four hundred and ninety one days I was
in the tunnels fifty meters underground in three different tunnels,
and we ate one and a half bitter bread a
day for twenty four hours, sometimes more. You never know
when the next meal will come. And that's your main
(13:45):
concern in captivity, because you understand this is the way
to survive.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
It's to eat something.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You develop rituals.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Why you were in captivity, to keep your mind, body
and spirit strong. You you you're very conscious about staying
as aware and as healthy and physically fit as possible.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
How did you do it?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
You understand that in the tunnels, you cannot wake up
every day every morning and to expect to go home.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
It's not a way to survive.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's not a way to keep your spirits, you know,
in a good condition. And so I forced them to
have a routine, to pray every morning, to eat, to train,
to talk, to.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Love, to sing some songs.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
We needed to do loads of things that will time
move day by day and wait patiently to the day
that we are going to be released. And and I
forced them even then to say in the evening at
least one good thing that happened to them in the
(14:58):
same day. And in the beginning they look at me
like I'm in I'm a lunatic. But after two or
three weeks or each one of them, of the young guys,
of the young hostages, succeed to find four and five
things that could things that happened to them in the
same day. It could be more food, It could be
(15:20):
someone that I used to humiliate us that is not
there anymore.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Loads of things like that, basic things that happened.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
To us that was very very good things, and they
lift our spirits.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Elie Sharabi is with us four hundred and ninety one
days held hostage by Homas. He has a new book out.
It's called Hostage. It's on Hannity dot com, Amazon dot com,
bookstores around the country. When we come back, we'll ask
Ellie about the propaganda tools that were employed by the terrorists,
the psychological torture, the lead up to his release, and
(15:58):
then the discovery that he had lost his family, and
his meeting with President Trump. All coming up quick break.
We'll come right back. We'll continue more with Eli Sharabi
new book, Hostage on the other side.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
All right, twenty five now till the top of the hour.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
We continue with Eli Sharabi. He has a new book out,
it's called Hostage, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller
List four hundred and ninety one Days Held in Captivity
by Hamas taken on October the seventh. You know, so
you're describing nothing but a mitigated torture.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
It sounds like at no point did you ever doubt
you were going home, which is pretty remarkable to me,
because I would imagine with each passing day, and I'm
not even sure being in a tunnel that you knew
you had any sense of time. Did you lose a
sense of time being in there.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
No, we dragged the time all the time. We knew
how many days we were in captivity.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
We knew the dates. We even knew that the time
of the.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Day, because they have five prayers a day, and we
asked them what times every prayer. They thought we are
we are very interested in Islam, but we actually wanted
to know about the time the day.
Speaker 5 (17:12):
It was very important for us. The only mistake.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
They've done with us that I said to us in
onund twenty twenty four, on February, they have we had
the twenty nine days and not twenty eight days.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
So it was a part of our control in.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
This captivity, and it was very important for us not
to lose the time, and you know, they tried, of
course to torture us with loads of psychologic error and
tell us that the Israeli government and the Israeli civilians
(17:49):
forgot about us. But we always believed it's not the true.
We always believed that we are going one day to
be released.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Did you hear year the bombings that were going on
in the process, Did you know that Israel was engaged
in Gaza militarily in a major way?
Speaker 5 (18:10):
Yes, we knew that.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
We've been in the first fifty two days, we've been
in a family house, Palestinian family house up in the ground,
and only there four hundred and forty days later. We've
been in the tunnels, and even in the tunnels, do
you hear a little bit of bombs? And the tunnel
(18:33):
were shaped from time to time, So we understood that
there was a woe outside.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
They keep saying that to us.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
That's a big wo outside, So we knew that.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yes, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
You talked about the propaganda tools and they had these
choreograph video productions that you describe in your book where
they forced you to take or partake in containing propaganda messaging.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
What was that.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
From time to time.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
They you know, they took photos of us and films
and film does that saying a few things that they
wrote for us. And we've done lots of rehearsals and
and they took these photos many many times, and so yes,
it's the propaganda for them.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
It's a it's a lot, especially.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
The last four days I've been in captivity and on
the day of my release, I've been on this stage ceremony,
and they forced me to answer that I'm what I'm
thinking about that I'm going and what I'm feeling about
me going to meet my wife and my daughters, and
(19:44):
that they already know them, that they've been murdered on
October seventh.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Now, they had psychological torture techniques that they employed as well, uh,
trying to get you to renounce Judaism for Islam and
misinformation about what was happening to you, your families outside.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
What were they telling you.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
They told me that they're seeing my wife, my daughters
with my mom in the protests. They said to me
that A few times I wanted to believe that, you know,
but always I knew that there's a scenario that that's
something wrong. You know, something really really batting that happened
to us on October seventh, So I always I wasn't
(20:30):
sure what.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
They said to me.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
And you know, they about the Islam. They tried to
bribe us when they gave us one mill a day,
and we've been very, very hungry, and sometimes when we
went to the toilet in the middle of the night,
they tried to bribe us with a little bit of
food that we'll say, some sentences from the Quran.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
And to convert us to be a Muslims.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And we refused, and we told them that we are
not religious, of course, but we knew that we can't
do that.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yes, so that that was a bridge too far.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Were you beaten, Yes, we were beaten from time to time,
but it was one thing, one time that it was
really bad violence against me. Someone got, you know, came
to me and start to punch me in my ribs,
kick me in my ribs when I was on the floor,
(21:29):
and step on me. And that was for at least
thirty thirty to forty seconds, you know, the longest thirty
forty seconds I've ever I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
And I probably.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Broke a few ribs and I've been in agony for
at least two or three months.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
That's painful, that's extraordinarily painful. When the Red Cross representative,
when you met that representative face to face one hundred
ninety one days later, what was that like? And how
did you find out that your family had been killed?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
After this horrible ceremony they've done to us, they transferred
us to the Red Cross.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
We got into the car and.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
They said to us, we have something like fifteen minutes
drive to the Israeli border. In the meantime, one of
us asked them, where have you been for five hundred days?
Why didn't you come to visit us and check on us?
And they said they wanted, but Harmas didn't let them.
And after fifteen minute drive, we arrived to the Israeli
(22:39):
border and the social worker from the IDEF approached to
me and said to me that my mother and my
sister waiting for me ten minutes from there. So I
said to her, please bring me my wife and my daughters,
and she said that my mother and my sister will
tell me. And of course, for me, it was announcement
(23:00):
that the war scenario for me happened, and.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
My wife and my daughters.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Are not alive anymore, and they didn't survive October seven.
It was, of course devastating for me, and I've cried
for a few minutes, something like five ten minutes, and
then I said to hell, Okay, let's go to meet
my mother and my sister. I need them to hug them.
And I knew who's going to who's giving me these
(23:28):
times the s friends in my life, and it's always
my family. So that's what I wanted to do, to
hug them.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
I mean, that's got to be in and of itself
its own level of torture, because you would assume the
whole time in captivity that they would be alive, and
you thought they had escaped what you were going through,
and I'm sure that was a source of comfort when
you were being held in captivity. You got to meet
President Trump. I don't know if did you talk to
(23:56):
Prime Minister Nathan Yahu.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I spoke with the privaci Prime Minister Antania a day
or two days before I flew to Washington to meet
mister Wheatcow and President Trump. It was very very important
for me to arrive to Washington, to the White House
and thank you know, personality to President Trump and mister
(24:19):
Wheatcock that they secure may release and thanks God, they've
done it two weeks ago with well and all the
live hostages been released as well, and it's amazing. And
you just show that how much, you know, power they
have and they can put pressure on the Israeli government
(24:42):
when they want.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
And it was very very.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Important to end this war. So a quiet for all
this area after two years, very difficult two years. And
we hopefully this peace process.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
In this area.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Will be you know, something that is reasonable and many
countries in the area will join to this agreement.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
It would be great for all this area.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
A lot of Americans and a lot of people around
the world do not understand Hamas to me is a
death cult.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
It's convert or die.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It is, you know, in their charter, the call for
the destruction of Israel at all costs and setting up
a caliphate within you know, and taking over Israel. What
can you tell people about the terror group of mass
that they don't seem to understand because in the interim,
what we've seen is on college campuses in the US
(25:42):
and in the halls of Congress and worldwide and in
the punditry class a rise of anti Semitism, which I
find beyond disgusting and ignorant. And you know who Hamas is,
you lived and were you know, held captive by Hamas?
What do people not know about them? What do they
(26:03):
need to know? Those people that don't understand.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
H I think actually all the all the world knows.
You just choose, you know, maybe to ignore that. But
the fact is Ramas is a very cruel their organization
like isis, and nobody have any doubt that we need
(26:28):
to kill them, all, all the Ramas and they cannot
have control in in Gaza. That's not a good leadership
for for the Palestinians, for better life. And we wish
after the last hostage will arrive to Israel one day,
(26:50):
we will you know, destroy this organization because they will
not stop and try to murder all of us in Israel,
that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Would you be able to recognize the people that are
holding you in captivity if given.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
The chance, Oh well, I've already recognized all of them,
and I hope one day the idea for reach each
one of them and kid him.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
But you are aware, I mean, I assume you said
you heard some of the bombing going on you are
aware that Israel also engaged in a conflict with Iran
and had many successful military strikes against Iran. I think
you're aware now that the Americans took out Iranian nuclear sites.
(27:42):
A lot of this precipitated by what happened to you
and your family and so many others on October the seventh.
But I do think that there is a level of
ignorance in terms of Israel being surrounded by enemies and
terror groups, and the tens and hundreds of thousands of
rockets fired into this country over the years and over
(28:02):
the decades, you know, culminating in October the seventh, and
there comes a point where you know, this is now
about Israel's survival because they're trying to, you know, wipe
Israel off the map, as it as is stated in
their own charter. And I don't think the world fully
comprehends because they're not living that way. We're not living
that way here in the US. But this is everyday
(28:25):
life of the people of Israel.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
You're right, You're right.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So because of that, you know, I say when I'm
talking with people around the world, and you know, they
have a very like you know, solid opinion about what
happening here. And you can hear all the ignorant and
they have no clue and don't really know the facts
(28:49):
about what's really happening here.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
And they probably you.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Know, got their information from the social media, lots of them.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
It's fake. It's really really sad reality for us.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
You're now in the process. You have to rebuild your
entire life. How is that going? And and do you
have any plans for your future now that you have
this new found freedom.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I'm very happy to be alive. I'm very happy to
be free. I'm going to rebuild my life. The grief
and my loss of my wife, my daughters, and my
brother will be always with me until my last day
in this life, and but it will be alongside of
(29:38):
my life, like instead of them. And I have to
keep being busy and you know, try to enjoy my
life as much as I can. And that's what I'm
planning to do.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Oh, it's a it's a terrible story, but one of survival,
one of strength and courage and resiliency, and I think
one that the world needs to hear. I'm really glad
you wrote this book. I hope Americans will read it.
I hope they will come to understand as deeply as
I do and many others, and that you certainly do,
(30:15):
the dangers of radical Islamis like members of the group AMAS,
and I hope they will join with you in pledging
to make sure that this group no longer exists, because
I think that's the only way to stop them, because
they are fanatical and they think they're on a mission
from God.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
We're glad you got home safely.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Welcome home, and we're sorry about what happened to your family,
and we wish you all the best in your future
endeavors and whatever you do.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
We appreciate your time, sir.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Eli Sharabi. Book is called Hostage New York Times bestseller.
You can get it on Hannity dot com, Amazon dot com,
bookstores around the country. We'll take a quick break, we'll
come back. We'll continue on the other side.
Well, we have come out to your city, Donna pay
I get.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thomas saying you a conscious zone, will be desire how.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
A telan.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
And if you want a little mag in a yin,
I come along Stephen Miller.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
He's he's a Nazi, Yes he is, and he's Jewish.
He should be ashamed of himself.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
The truth is that Donald Trump is the most president
in the history of the United States of America.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
What I say now, you say, kings new New.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
This is what democracy looks like.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
That's what democracy looks like.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
This, there's what democracy looks like.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
This is what democracy looks what fradom is back in style.
Welcome to the evolution, coming to your.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
SENTI going the way I gets Alz and sane you
a conscious song.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
Sean Hennity show more me I'm the scenes. Information on
freaking news and.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
More bold inspired solutions for America. Coming up next our
final News round Up and Information Overload hour.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
All Right, News Round Up and Information Overload Hour eight
hundred and nine four one, Sean, if you want to
be a part of the program. It's been beyond disconcerting
to me that there are so many that have jumped
on a bandwagon and have you know, at times made
Israel the the you know, the aggressor in this conflict.
(01:52):
And I ask people all the time, I say, Okay,
imagine your country has been inundated from all sides, with
rockets being fired into your town and your city and
your country. I mean, we're not talking about, you know,
a thousand, We're talking about tens and tens and tens
of thousands. I told you about the trip I took
(02:15):
one of my many trips to Israel, and I went
to Throat, a border town with Gaza, and by the
time I had been there, they had gotten hit with
ten thousand rockets one little town. In ten years. Kids
played in underground bunker playgrounds. And when I was there
one day, I came back the next day and they
had been a rocket attack the night before and a kabbutz,
(02:38):
you know, was you know, you see the shrapnel and
the metal, you know, designed for maximum destruction. And imagine
if this was an American city, and then imagine you
have a population of under ten million Israelis in what
is a geographic size about the state of New Jersey,
(02:58):
and you know, just imagine that the equivalent of you
extrapolate out their population compared to ours of forty thousand
dead Americans in a day, because that's that's the percentage
of their population that were murdered on October seventh, twenty
twenty three, and then those that were kidnapped, and then
(03:19):
the rapes that took place. All of this is on video.
The IDF showed it to me. And the beheadings that
took place, and the torture that took place, we now
understand inside what that would be like. We're very honored
to have on the program. Elie Sharabi is with us.
He spent four hundred and ninety one days in captivity.
(03:41):
He has a brand new book out, it's called Hostage.
It just debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.
And he's here to tell his story, and it's really
an honor to have him. I can't imagine the horror
of having a face four under ninety one days in captivity,
not knowing if if you're ever going to get home
and see your family again. Elie Sharabi, thank God you're home.
(04:05):
God bless you, and thank you for joining us on
this program.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Tell us what happened that day, October seventh. I know
that you had been leading a peaceful life. You had
a new wife from Great Britain, and take us to
that day.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
We woke up half past six in the morning, thousands
of alarmed missiles over central and southern of Israel, all
the kyboots in the area of Gaza, and we took
our daughters to the safe room and our dog.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
We've waited there for more than four hours.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
We've waited that the army will arrive because we got
a message that there's a possibilit that harmasteroists infiltrated the
Bary and and some half an hour before they arrived
to our house, me and my wife made a decision
(05:14):
that we are not going to fight back. We don't
have any weapons with us, and we presumed that I
will be kidnapped. And my wife and my daughters have
a British passport and we presume that this passport will
protect them. We thought that this terrorists have any boundaries
(05:35):
and that's it for hours in this safe room, and
they arrived to our house, opened the safe room and
start to shoot immediately in the safe room to scare us,
we jumped on our daughters to shield them and protect them,
and we shouted them to stop, and immediately we said
(06:00):
them they have a British passport. They understood that, and
three minutes later they kidnapped me as we presumed, and
that was the last time I've seen my daughters alive.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And go through the rest of the story. What happened
to your family?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Apparently five minutes after they give me they've been I've
been kidnapped.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
They murdered.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
My wife and my two daughters in our house and
our dog as well.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
And like they've done in you know, in many places,
and then in our key boots.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Our key boots suffered from one hundred and to people
that've been dead same day, been murdered, and another thirty
being kidnapped together.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You know, you were fluent in Arabic, which allowed you
to understand everything your captors are saying when you finally
realize that you were being held by Hamas. And I
assume you didn't know at the time what had happened
to your family, but you understood what your captors were saying,
which kind of revealed insight into their motivations, their belief system,
(07:17):
the hierarchy inside of Hamas. What did you learn, what
did you hear? Did they know that you understood them?
Speaker 5 (07:25):
First of all, they were very very surprised.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I know Arabic, and they start to say to me
that I'm from Mozad and.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
All this secret service.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And I said, then, I'm simple civilian and understood, of
course everything they've said. They tried to hide from me
a few information, but I succeed to understand almost everything.
And I had many, many conversations with them, and each conversation,
(07:59):
you know, they've finished with this mantra and these sentences
that they have heard in the mosque. And they said
to me that they don't care how many how much
time will take to kill all the Israelis and the Jews.
And they come in and they come back on twenty six,
(08:19):
twenty seven, and twenty eight, and after they finished with
the Israelis and the Jews, they will come to Britain
and France and Germany and to us, because for them
all the words should be Muslims and there's only religion,
only one religion in the world.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
It's this Lam.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Let me ask you this question, because you know you
had a life experience as a father and a manager,
and you claim that that gave you tools to navigate,
you know, what you were going through at the time.
When when did they really think in that, Wow, my
life has now changed dramatically and I have no power
over the future of my life.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
The minute that they pushed me into the car near
to Newberry, I've understood that it's I'm in my step
having mode. Now I need to survive to come back
to my wife and my daughters. And so I understood, Okay,
I don't have any control of my life now or
(09:20):
my freedom, but I I can, you know, always to
choose how to react to this, to these situations.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
And I tried.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
To choose all the time, you know, choose life and
try to survive.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
A moment you thought was there a moment you thought
there's no way you're going home?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
No, it was one it No, it wasn't any one
moment of that. Always keep saying to the young other
hostages that have been with me that it's only a
matter of time that with someone, sometime in the future,
someone will come and let us know that we are
going home and we are.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
Going to be released.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And because you know, I know how the IDEF works
and all this, you know, Security Service of Israel walking
and I knew they're taking care of us to release
us from there.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Let me ask you what were there? What was the
relationship like with your fellow hostages? What was the relationship
like with your captors?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
What were the conditions like? Where were you being held?
The more you moved often.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So of course we had a relationship, a kind of
relationship with our captors. It was very delicate relationship which
should be very very careful not to get confused with them.
But we understood this relationship should help us to survive,
and we give us the will be able to ask
(11:02):
some things from time to time, and especially food, of course.
And the relationship within between us the hostages wasn't all
the time great because when you put four gon up
men in ten metal square, it's not easy.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
Each one of us have his own, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Desires and way to live and values, and.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
It wasn't very easy.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And all these situations you should be managed that you
can be able to survive together. And the condition in
the tunnels were horrible.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
We were chained.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Twenty four to seven for almost all all the days
in captivity.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
It was most of the time it's dark.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
They don't have enough batteries for life, fifty metals underground,
no water, no no running water for shower. So we
showered with with our bottles one one in six weeks.
And you know, worms all over the place, rats, cockroaches,
(12:24):
and they humiliate us day on daily basis.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
From time to time. It was violenced against us.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And but the worst thing was the starvation that was
on purpose, of course, because they ate four or five
times a day a day, and we ate one, you know,
one bottle of past our day, one and a half
bitter bread a day.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
That's what we ate.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And we've seen the dozens of boxes that coming into
the to the tunnels every week, every two weeks, this
humanitarian aid that they stole from their population.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Now you were given there were some days you were
only given a peter a day and that was it.
That's all you'd have all day. And you know, you
saw whether you live. Were you in the tunnels pretty
much the whole time? Were you in different tunnels that
they move you at times?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
So I moved three tunners for four hundred and forty days.
From the four hundred and ninety one days I was
in the tunnels fifty meters underground in three different tunnels,
and we ate one and a half bitter bread a
day for twenty four hours, sometimes more. You never know
when the next meal will come. And that's your main
(13:45):
concern in captivity, because you understand this is the way
to survive.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
It's to eat something.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You develop rituals.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Why you were in captivity, to keep your mind, body
and spirit strong. You you you're very conscious about staying
as aware and as healthy and physically fit as possible.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
How did you do it?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
You understand that in the tunnels, you cannot wake up
every day every morning and to expect to go home.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
It's not a way to survive.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's not a way to keep your spirits, you know,
in a good condition. And so I forced them to
have a routine, to pray every morning, to eat, to train,
to talk, to.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Love, to sing some songs.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
We needed to do loads of things that will time
move day by day and wait patiently to the day
that we are going to be released. And and I
forced them even then to say in the evening at
least one good thing that happened to them in the
(14:58):
same day. And in the beginning they look at me
like I'm in I'm a lunatic. But after two or
three weeks or each one of them, of the young guys,
of the young hostages, succeed to find four and five
things that could things that happened to them in the
same day. It could be more food, It could be
(15:20):
someone that I used to humiliate us that is not
there anymore.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Loads of things like that, basic things that happened.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
To us that was very very good things, and they
lift our spirits.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Elie Sharabi is with us four hundred and ninety one
days held hostage by Homas. He has a new book out.
It's called Hostage. It's on Hannity dot com, Amazon dot com,
bookstores around the country. When we come back, we'll ask
Ellie about the propaganda tools that were employed by the terrorists,
the psychological torture, the lead up to his release, and
(15:58):
then the discovery that he had lost his family, and
his meeting with President Trump. All coming up quick break.
We'll come right back. We'll continue more with Eli Sharabi
new book, Hostage on the other side.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
All right, twenty five now till the top of the hour.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
We continue with Eli Sharabi. He has a new book out,
it's called Hostage, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller
List four hundred and ninety one Days Held in Captivity
by Hamas taken on October the seventh. You know, so
you're describing nothing but a mitigated torture.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
It sounds like at no point did you ever doubt
you were going home, which is pretty remarkable to me,
because I would imagine with each passing day, and I'm
not even sure being in a tunnel that you knew
you had any sense of time. Did you lose a
sense of time being in there.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
No, we dragged the time all the time. We knew
how many days we were in captivity.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
We knew the dates. We even knew that the time
of the.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Day, because they have five prayers a day, and we
asked them what times every prayer. They thought we are
we are very interested in Islam, but we actually wanted
to know about the time the day.
Speaker 5 (17:12):
It was very important for us. The only mistake.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
They've done with us that I said to us in
onund twenty twenty four, on February, they have we had
the twenty nine days and not twenty eight days.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
So it was a part of our control in.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
This captivity, and it was very important for us not
to lose the time, and you know, they tried, of
course to torture us with loads of psychologic error and
tell us that the Israeli government and the Israeli civilians
(17:49):
forgot about us. But we always believed it's not the true.
We always believed that we are going one day to
be released.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Did you hear year the bombings that were going on
in the process, Did you know that Israel was engaged
in Gaza militarily in a major way?
Speaker 5 (18:10):
Yes, we knew that.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
We've been in the first fifty two days, we've been
in a family house, Palestinian family house up in the ground,
and only there four hundred and forty days later. We've
been in the tunnels, and even in the tunnels, do
you hear a little bit of bombs? And the tunnel
(18:33):
were shaped from time to time, So we understood that
there was a woe outside.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
They keep saying that to us.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
That's a big wo outside, So we knew that.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yes, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
You talked about the propaganda tools and they had these
choreograph video productions that you describe in your book where
they forced you to take or partake in containing propaganda messaging.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
What was that.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
From time to time.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
They you know, they took photos of us and films
and film does that saying a few things that they
wrote for us. And we've done lots of rehearsals and
and they took these photos many many times, and so yes,
it's the propaganda for them.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
It's a it's a lot, especially.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
The last four days I've been in captivity and on
the day of my release, I've been on this stage ceremony,
and they forced me to answer that I'm what I'm
thinking about that I'm going and what I'm feeling about
me going to meet my wife and my daughters, and
(19:44):
that they already know them, that they've been murdered on
October seventh.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Now, they had psychological torture techniques that they employed as well, uh,
trying to get you to renounce Judaism for Islam and
misinformation about what was happening to you, your families outside.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
What were they telling you.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
They told me that they're seeing my wife, my daughters
with my mom in the protests. They said to me
that A few times I wanted to believe that, you know,
but always I knew that there's a scenario that that's
something wrong. You know, something really really batting that happened
to us on October seventh, So I always I wasn't
(20:30):
sure what.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
They said to me.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
And you know, they about the Islam. They tried to
bribe us when they gave us one mill a day,
and we've been very, very hungry, and sometimes when we
went to the toilet in the middle of the night,
they tried to bribe us with a little bit of
food that we'll say, some sentences from the Quran.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
And to convert us to be a Muslims.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And we refused, and we told them that we are
not religious, of course, but we knew that we can't
do that.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yes, so that that was a bridge too far.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Were you beaten, Yes, we were beaten from time to time,
but it was one thing, one time that it was
really bad violence against me. Someone got, you know, came
to me and start to punch me in my ribs,
kick me in my ribs when I was on the floor,
(21:29):
and step on me. And that was for at least
thirty thirty to forty seconds, you know, the longest thirty
forty seconds I've ever I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
And I probably.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Broke a few ribs and I've been in agony for
at least two or three months.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
That's painful, that's extraordinarily painful. When the Red Cross representative,
when you met that representative face to face one hundred
ninety one days later, what was that like? And how
did you find out that your family had been killed?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
After this horrible ceremony they've done to us, they transferred
us to the Red Cross.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
We got into the car and.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
They said to us, we have something like fifteen minutes
drive to the Israeli border. In the meantime, one of
us asked them, where have you been for five hundred days?
Why didn't you come to visit us and check on us?
And they said they wanted, but Harmas didn't let them.
And after fifteen minute drive, we arrived to the Israeli
(22:39):
border and the social worker from the IDEF approached to
me and said to me that my mother and my
sister waiting for me ten minutes from there. So I
said to her, please bring me my wife and my daughters,
and she said that my mother and my sister will
tell me. And of course, for me, it was announcement
(23:00):
that the war scenario for me happened, and.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
My wife and my daughters.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Are not alive anymore, and they didn't survive October seven.
It was, of course devastating for me, and I've cried
for a few minutes, something like five ten minutes, and
then I said to hell, Okay, let's go to meet
my mother and my sister. I need them to hug them.
And I knew who's going to who's giving me these
(23:28):
times the s friends in my life, and it's always
my family. So that's what I wanted to do, to
hug them.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
I mean, that's got to be in and of itself
its own level of torture, because you would assume the
whole time in captivity that they would be alive, and
you thought they had escaped what you were going through,
and I'm sure that was a source of comfort when
you were being held in captivity. You got to meet
President Trump. I don't know if did you talk to
(23:56):
Prime Minister Nathan Yahu.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I spoke with the privaci Prime Minister Antania a day
or two days before I flew to Washington to meet
mister Wheatcow and President Trump. It was very very important
for me to arrive to Washington, to the White House
and thank you know, personality to President Trump and mister
(24:19):
Wheatcock that they secure may release and thanks God, they've
done it two weeks ago with well and all the
live hostages been released as well, and it's amazing. And
you just show that how much, you know, power they
have and they can put pressure on the Israeli government
(24:42):
when they want.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
And it was very very.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Important to end this war. So a quiet for all
this area after two years, very difficult two years. And
we hopefully this peace process.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
In this area.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Will be you know, something that is reasonable and many
countries in the area will join to this agreement.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
It would be great for all this area.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
A lot of Americans and a lot of people around
the world do not understand Hamas to me is a
death cult.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
It's convert or die.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It is, you know, in their charter, the call for
the destruction of Israel at all costs and setting up
a caliphate within you know, and taking over Israel. What
can you tell people about the terror group of mass
that they don't seem to understand because in the interim,
what we've seen is on college campuses in the US
(25:42):
and in the halls of Congress and worldwide and in
the punditry class a rise of anti Semitism, which I
find beyond disgusting and ignorant. And you know who Hamas is,
you lived and were you know, held captive by Hamas?
What do people not know about them? What do they
(26:03):
need to know? Those people that don't understand.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
H I think actually all the all the world knows.
You just choose, you know, maybe to ignore that. But
the fact is Ramas is a very cruel their organization
like isis, and nobody have any doubt that we need
(26:28):
to kill them, all, all the Ramas and they cannot
have control in in Gaza. That's not a good leadership
for for the Palestinians, for better life. And we wish
after the last hostage will arrive to Israel one day,
(26:50):
we will you know, destroy this organization because they will
not stop and try to murder all of us in Israel,
that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Would you be able to recognize the people that are
holding you in captivity if given.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
The chance, Oh well, I've already recognized all of them,
and I hope one day the idea for reach each
one of them and kid him.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
But you are aware, I mean, I assume you said
you heard some of the bombing going on you are
aware that Israel also engaged in a conflict with Iran
and had many successful military strikes against Iran. I think
you're aware now that the Americans took out Iranian nuclear sites.
(27:42):
A lot of this precipitated by what happened to you
and your family and so many others on October the seventh.
But I do think that there is a level of
ignorance in terms of Israel being surrounded by enemies and
terror groups, and the tens and hundreds of thousands of
rockets fired into this country over the years and over
(28:02):
the decades, you know, culminating in October the seventh, and
there comes a point where you know, this is now
about Israel's survival because they're trying to, you know, wipe
Israel off the map, as it as is stated in
their own charter. And I don't think the world fully
comprehends because they're not living that way. We're not living
that way here in the US. But this is everyday
(28:25):
life of the people of Israel.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
You're right, You're right.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So because of that, you know, I say when I'm
talking with people around the world, and you know, they
have a very like you know, solid opinion about what
happening here. And you can hear all the ignorant and
they have no clue and don't really know the facts
(28:49):
about what's really happening here.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
And they probably you.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Know, got their information from the social media, lots of them.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
It's fake. It's really really sad reality for us.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
You're now in the process. You have to rebuild your
entire life. How is that going? And and do you
have any plans for your future now that you have
this new found freedom.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I'm very happy to be alive. I'm very happy to
be free. I'm going to rebuild my life. The grief
and my loss of my wife, my daughters, and my
brother will be always with me until my last day
in this life, and but it will be alongside of
(29:38):
my life, like instead of them. And I have to
keep being busy and you know, try to enjoy my
life as much as I can. And that's what I'm
planning to do.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Oh, it's a it's a terrible story, but one of survival,
one of strength and courage and resiliency, and I think
one that the world needs to hear. I'm really glad
you wrote this book. I hope Americans will read it.
I hope they will come to understand as deeply as
I do and many others, and that you certainly do,
(30:15):
the dangers of radical Islamis like members of the group AMAS,
and I hope they will join with you in pledging
to make sure that this group no longer exists, because
I think that's the only way to stop them, because
they are fanatical and they think they're on a mission
from God.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
We're glad you got home safely.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Welcome home, and we're sorry about what happened to your family,
and we wish you all the best in your future
endeavors and whatever you do.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
We appreciate your time, sir.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Eli Sharabi. Book is called Hostage New York Times bestseller.
You can get it on Hannity dot com, Amazon dot com,
bookstores around the country. We'll take a quick break, we'll
come back. We'll continue on the other side.
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